It didn’t take much for Anakin to realise a few things.
The first was simple, almost disappointingly so. The initial surge of power he had felt earlier, just as Ethan had almost reached him, was already fading, slipping back into something less usable than it had first seemed.
He could still feel the Force around him, but it was distant in a way that irritated him more than he wanted to admit. And though said connection was growing, it would take time before he reached the heights of Darth Vader.
The second realisation had come from watching her.
Rebecca Costa-Brown was not what she appeared to be.
That much was obvious now in retrospect, the kind of obvious truth that only made sense after you had already stepped past the point of no return. There was steel beneath her words and composure, a hidden alignment of priorities that didn’t match the public-facing role of a bureaucrat in an organisation like the Parahuman Response Team.
She also knew too much, and not in the vague sense that politicians ‘knew things.’ No, this was specific. The kind of knowledge that included obscure terms like ‘agents.’ The kind that implied access to a precognitive asset.
That was what had ultimately confirmed it.
Precognition wasn’t just useful. It was a decisive resource that could render entire strategies obsolete. In Anakin’s experience, anything that valuable was either hoarded, controlled, or hidden behind layers of deception so dense that even asking about it became dangerous.
And Rebecca Costa-Brown had not hesitated when the topic brushed close to it, not even slightly.
That told him more than any answer would have.
Which brought him, inevitably, to the conclusion he didn’t particularly like sitting with: Cauldron was larger, and more organised, than he had assumed.
Anakin exhaled slowly, still seated in the hospital room they had given him, and flexed his hand slightly.
The Force responded, sluggishly.
He resisted the urge to sigh and leaned back slightly.
There was no obvious place to apply pressure without immediate escalation, and even then the building itself was a problem, the heroes inside it another, and the fact he was still operating within their controlled environment made everything worse.
He could likely deal with Rebecca if it came to it, but Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault… that was a different matter.
The only uncomfortable option was for him to cooperate, at least outwardly. He would tell Rebecca Costa-Brown what she wanted to know, but only to a point. Enough to keep her interested without turning him into anything more than a nuisance.
He had learned that survival was often a matter of what others believed they had already taken from you. And in this situation, where knowledge of himself seemed very valuable, that principle mattered more than ever.
For now, he would keep some cards close to his chest as he bided his time.
“You wanted to know where I come from,” he said.
“Yes.”
He leaned forward slightly, considering how to frame it. The truth, in full, would be useless because disbelief was only part of the problem. Even if she accepted it, the information would be incomplete in the ways that mattered most. This world didn’t have anything to compare his galaxy to, nothing apart from fictional works. Meaning that anything he said would sound almost fantastical the moment it left his mouth, shaped by biases and assumptions they didn’t even realise were there.
So he simplified.
“I come from a different galaxy,” he said. “A structured civilization spanning thousands of star systems. We had faster-than-light travel, political bodies that governed entire sectors, and wars that reshaped history on a scale your world would consider… unimaginable.”
Rebecca didn’t react outwardly, but something in her eyes intensified.
He continued.
“There was a field of energy that exists in all living things, binding life together. It responds to emotion, intent, and action.” A slight pause. “We call it the Force.”
“You use it as a weapon?” she asked, and it was almost laughable how expected that question was.
“Some use it as a tool,” Anakin corrected. Then, after a moment, “For most, it becomes a weapon.”
Any more could give away vital information about himself, so he kept things abstract.
“There are individuals in my galaxy capable of influencing matter, probability, and even perception, in some cases,” he said. “Some develop it naturally while others train for decades. It is not uniform.”
Rebecca’s expression tightened, as if she was already adjusting her assumptions around the answer. “Is it common?”
“No.”
A beat.
“And you?” she asked.
Anakin felt the familiar instinct to withhold that information, but he had already decided how much to give.
“I was trained,” he said. “Extensively.”
And that, more than anything else, seemed to answer the question she hadn’t asked yet.